One thing they don’t tell your about being a torture-slash-sex slave is just how boring it is while you’re not being used.

I sat in my darkened cell for what felt like hours. With no window to see out of, I had no idea what time it was, but I was sure most of the day had passed. With nothing better to do, I flexed my willpower and strained against my collar’s magical suppression.

 

[Advanced Mana Manipulation] Skill has reached rank 2
[Advanced Mana Manipulation] Skill has reached rank 3
[Advanced Mana Manipulation] Skill has reached rank 4

 

Interestingly, despite barely being able to do anything with my mana, I could still manipulate it a tiny little bit and that counted as practice. Straining against the suppression actually seemed to be an effective way to train my mental muscles. It was the only useful thing to do I could think of. If I got my mana manipulation Skill higher, it might be possible to overcome the collar’s suppression effect.

Unfortunately, after three rank ups, I couldn’t feel much of a difference in my mana control at all. I was starting to think this particular plan wouldn’t work. Another dead end.

My first plan was searching the skill shop, I still had a single skill point left, after all. Sadly, I didn’t find any sort of ‘Resist Supression’ Skill, or anything else that would help me slip my collar.

I alternated my manipulation training with bouts of Meditation as well, switching whenever I started to feel mentally fatigued from the strain of maintaining concentration for so long.

 

[Meditation] Skill has reached rank 7

 

I was past Plan A or B, and on Plan C now. I could only hope that maxing out [Advanced Mana Manipulation] or [Meditation] might unlock some useful hidden skill in my shop that I could buy with my free point.

An unknown number of hours passed. I spent the time laying on my back in the straw, arms shackled above my head as I played with my mana. Finally, I heard the sound of heavy footsteps from the hall outside my door. There was a clunk sound, the door’s bar being lifted away, and then the heavy door opened with a creak. Dim lamplight poured into my cell, the first actual light I’d seen in hours.

Standing in the doorway was a man in a fine black tuxedo. He was pale, with dark eyes, and pitch black hair. His hair was oiled and slicked back, and he had a thin, neatly trimmed, moustache. He looked down at where I was lying with cold cruel eyes. He smiled, clearly deriving some pleasure from the power he had over me in this situation.

The tuxedo man didn’t look small, but also wasn’t especially physically imposing. That wasn’t a problem though, because next to him were two burly tough dudes, smaller than Ash, but still bigger than most guys. They had plenty of intimidation factor. They were the sort of minion a creepy torture brothel proprietor might hire to stand around and look scary while keeping the peace.

“Hey,” I said. “Are you the guys who kidnapped me? Wanna explain what the fuck’s going on?”

I knew these guys could, and likely would do horrible things to me, but I was determined not to be some quivering damsel in distress. I was frustrated by boredom, sensory deprivation, and my lack of success overcoming my magic suppression.

The dark haired man didn’t reply. He looked over his shoulder at one of the toughs, snapped his fingers and pointed at me. The big guy hunched down and stepped into my low-ceilinged cell. Without warning, he kicked me hard in the stomach.

The blow knocked the wind out of my lungs, and the attitude off my face. “Uugh!” I groaned, curling up on my side protectively. It was lucky I had an empty stomach, I’d have probably lost my lunch otherwise.

“Slaves should adopt a respectful tone with their masters, and should not speak unless asked a direct question,” the dark haired man said coolly.

“And I suppose you’ve decided I’m you’re slave now?” I grumbled. “Do you have documentation for that? I’m pretty sure you just kidnapped me off the street. This shit can’t be legal.”

The man snapped his fingers again. The tough guy next to me raised his boot and stomped down on my side.

“Uaaaagh!” I gasped. Fuck… that hurt. My eyes watered.

“Slaves should adopt a respectful tone with their masters, and should not speak unless asked a direct question,” the dark haired man repeated.

I opened my mouth to complain, and give voice to my annoyance. I saw three pairs of eyes starting down at me expectantly, ready to stomp me again if I mouthed off. I thought better of it, and chose to stay silent.

The tough guy pulled out a key that looked something like a hex head screwdriver, and unlocked my manacles. He grabbed me by the shoulder, and roughly rolled me onto my stomach. He pinned my arms together behind my back, and a second set of manacles clicked shut around my wrists. He grabbed a fist full of my hair, and dragged me around, up and out. I hissed in pain, and scrambled to my feet trying to follow him and keep him from ripping all my hair out.

“Oww oww! Don’t pull my hair, just tell me what you want and I’ll do it!” I whined.

Slam!

The pain on my scalp doubled, and I was thrown against the stone wall of the dungeon hall outside. A big meaty hand closed around my throat, pinning me firmly with my back against the wall. A big brutish fist wound back. My arms were bound behind me, so I couldn’t move them to protect myself. I tensed my abs, doing what I could to brace myself.

“Ooof!” The fist smashed into my tummy. I tried to curl forward to protect my abused gut, but the fist on my throat kept me pinned in place.

“Not much of a learner, this one,” the brute commented with a cruel grin.

“Slaves should adopt a respectful tone with their masters, and should not speak unless asked a direct question,” the dark haired man repeated for the third time. “You are free to act how you want with a clients, some of them enjoy a bit of struggle and will pay for that privilege. I, however, do not enjoy unruly slaves. You’ve had three gentle reminders of your position. The next time you mouth off to one of us, we won’t be so gentle. Do I make myself clear?”

That was gentle? Fuck.

“That was a direct question slave. You will answer yes sir, or no sir.” the dark haired man added.

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Good,” the dark haired man replied.

The brute released my throat and grabbed a fistful of hair again. I clenched my jaw and hissed in pain, trying to supress the urge to comment on the unnecessary brutality. Seriously… I wasn’t trying to fight! If they want me to walk, just ask me to walk. What the fuck!

The three men led me along a narrow hall of dungeon cells, thankfully it had a higher ceiling than the cells themselves, probably about eight feet. There were about twenty cells altogether, not a huge number. I was near the end of the row, and all of the cells I passed were empty, with door ajar. Either this brothel was going through a drought of slaves, or they were just us all somewhere else and I was one of the last to be moved.

We climbed up a narrow staircase and reached… another dungeon. This was a nicer dungeon, however. There still weren’t any windows, but the stone arched ceiling was tall and vaulted, with nicely detailed gothic-style stonework. I was led into a wide, cavernous hall, lit with plentiful oil lamps and charcoal braziers.

It was a huge torture chamber.

It was laid out a bit like a cathedral, with a large vaulted central hall, wide open, and two smaller wings on either side of it, with lower ceilings. Down the very centre of the vaulted hall, chains and shackles hung from the ceiling, connected via pulley to cranks so the victim could be hoisted up. The open central space was otherwise kept nice and clear, probably to keep clients from whipping each other accidentally.

The side sections contained a dozen different pieces of horrifying torture furniture and cruel machinery. Thanks to a night spent surfing Wikipedia on the inquisitional witch hunts, I recognized some of them. There was the Spanish Donkey or Wooden Horse, a sharp wedge that the victim would straddle, the wood digging into their crotch painfully. There was the Judas Chair, a big cruel pyramid the victim would be forced to sit and anally impale themselves on. There was some sort of bench, with a little wooden pillory that kept a person’s feet locked in position above a fiery brazier. It was currently unlit, thankfully. There was the famous rack as well ready to slowly pull a person’s arms and legs out of their sockets… and some sort of big wheel thing…

Not all of it was obvious torture devices though. There was a wide variety of benches, tables, frames, pillories and other things to hold a person while you did whatever you wanted with them. One corner of the room was set aside for regular old raping, hosting a few straw mattresses and pillows ready for use. Behind the torture devices, there also seemed to be a row of other rooms, much larger than our cells, if the space between the doors was any indication. I assumed those would be private rooms for customers who didn’t want to play in plain view of the others.

And of course, there were the slave girls themselves.

The great hall’s ceiling was supported by wide stone columns on either side of the arch, forming the boundary between the vaulted central area and the two sides areas with the torture devices. Each of these large stone pillars was decorated with a girl. They stood, back against the stone, with the arms raised above their heads, and wrists shackled to a ring embedded in the column above them.

I was given only a few seconds to take in the sight before I was led to an empty pillar. My arms were unshackled from behind my back, raised above my head and shackled again to the wall. My feet were left free, I debated spitefully kicking the thug who’d been manhandling me, but decided I’d rather not get punched again.

I looked around at my neighbours, my fellow torture slaves. Each of the girls had a metal collar around their necks. How many of these were legitimately bought? How many were kidnapped or stolen? I saw a few different demihuman species on offer. I didn’t see any Aasimar, or purely human looking girls in the lineup.

I counted seventeen slaves on offer, including myself.

About half were beastkin of various flavors: Cat girls, fox girls, puppy girls, mouse girls… and so on. If it was a mammal, there was probably a beastkin version of it. Like the cat and wolf girls I’d seen before, they all looked to be about 80% human, with animal ears, tails, claws, and feet.

Perhaps another quarter were elves, in one of three different colours. There were pale high elves, like Chloe, who had once built their beautiful cities in the mountains, before the Taint destroyed and scattered their civilization. There were tanned low elves, originally hailing from a desert region far to the south, they’d once lived alongside humanity as equals, before the Taint ruined everything. And finally, there were the purple skinned dark elves, who were native to a massive unexplored cave system beneath the surface of the planet. They fled to the surface when their tunnels and cities were overrun by a particularly dangerous type of rape spider that now dominated the area.

Aside from the elves, there were also two halflings, a thick muscular dwarf girl, and myself, the unique and sparkly Aasimar, on offer.

Surprisingly, two of the slaves on display were boys: A mouse boy, and a deer boy. Were they here for the female sadists? or for gay male sadists? Probably the latter, I suspected. I doubted many openly dominant women would emerge in a patriarchal society like this. They were both smaller gentlemen, pretty like Adam, and a bit on the effeminate side. I suspected they’d be the bottom bitches during their eventual rapes. They had modest little dicks, shaved clean, like all the girls, and currently flaccid.

There was one special slave, singled out from the others. I… didn’t want to look directly at her. She’d been selected for some sort of special punishment.

This one was a dark elf, with white hair and grey-purple skin. She was set up as a display of sorts, like cruel living art piece. A large wooden cross had been suspended against the side wall of the main vaulted space, opposite the entrance staircase, almost ten feet off the ground. It was a prominent location, in plain sight of any customer entering this hellhole. This wasn’t a Jesus style cross, it was more of a big ‘X’ shape, called a St. Andrew’s cross back on Earth. The dark elf had been nailed to it.

Four thick iron spikes, almost an inch wide, had been driven through the poor girl’s wrists and ankles pinning her in place. Her entire body weight was supported entirely by only these cruel spikes, there wasn’t even a platform for her to rest her feet. And that was only a small part of her tortures. Her body was a gory patchwork of welts, cuts and burns. Stripes, squiggly lines, and pretty little spirals of charred flesh decorated her upper body, almost like tattoos. Her legs, from her upper thighs down to her feet had been flayed, the skin missing entirely, revealing cords of bare muscle to the open air. They were like a pair of horrifying, bloody thigh high stockings.

Whatever she’d been through must have taken hours. It was hard to believe she was still alive. She looked like a corpse, but I could see her chest move with every breath, and fresh tears on her face. She was fully awake, fully lucid, and in horrifying agony.

The cross was held aloft by a rope and pulley, connected to a crank on the dungeon floor. I watched one of the guards tap another on the shoulder, and show him the rope. He gave his fellow a cheeky look, and grabbed the taught line. He pulled it out to the side, hoisting the cross slightly higher. Then, he let it go. The cross fell back down, and stopped with a sudden jerk.

“AaaaaaAAAAAAAGHHHH!!” the dark elf let out a sudden demented shriek of agony that shook me to the core. It rang out long and loud, covering the entire hall. Nothing with a pair of humanlike lungs should have been able to make a sound like that.

That was… genuinely scary. Could that happen to me? To anyone here? That was completely fucked up. This went beyond any sort of sane BDSM play. This wasn’t even sexual… it was just raw agony inflicted on a helpless victim.

I could handle a bit of rough love and degradation, but this was too much, even for a masochist like me. For once, I didn’t get wet. I was truly scared.

As my eyes scanned over the prospective victims. The man I decided to call Satan’s Butler left me, and went to get another victim from the cells below. He soon came back with another elf. This one, I recognized.

“Chloe!” I gasped. Oh no, not Chloe too!

Chloe made eye contact with me, and shook her head no. Indicating that she couldn’t talk. Unlike me, she could apparently follow orders properly. I had a number of nasty bruises spreading on my tummy, but I didn’t see a single mark on her body. She was chained against a pillar across the hall from me.

Without any prompting from the boss, the thug from earlier came up to me.

“Okay, okay, no talking, sorry!” I muttered.

“Uuugh!” The thug’s fist smashed into my stomach again. I slouched over and groaned in pain. Oh, my poor tummy! Why did he always have to hit the same damn spot!

After Chloe, another slave was brought up. A ginger haired catgirl. She looked utterly terrified. Naked, shivering against the cold stone, staring wide eyed at all the torture equipment. When she noticed the dark elf hanging on the wall, she whimpered audibly, her shivering doubled in intensity, and a little trickle of pee dripped down her leg. She turned out to be the last one brought up from the cells below.

Were we ordered from oldest to newest? I compared the fresh jittery catgirl next to me, with a girl on the exact opposite side of the hall. She was a caramel skinned low elf. Physically, she was in perfect shape, cleanly healed with no signs of torture scarring her body. Mentally? She looked near catatonic. Her glazed over eyes were staring unfocused into the distance. Unlike the catgirl who squirmed uncomfortably in her shackles, the elf was relaxed and limp in her shackles, hanging from her wrists, completely motionless.

How long had she been here? How long did it take to break someone that completely? What about the hanging elf?

An elderly man in a white robe walked up to me. He wasn’t decrepit with age, merely old, looking to be somewhere in his early sixties, still nice and spry. He glanced down at my bruises with a disapproving frown, then looked me in the eye and smiled warmly. A nice kind smile… Maybe this one wasn’t so bad…

He reached out and grabbed my exposed breast. A good solid grope… an utterly shameless violation. I gave him the stink eye, but he didn’t acknowledge my glare at all, merely enjoying my breast at his leisure. He squeezed it, bounced it, teased the nipple until it was hard, and then gently pinched it a few times. He wasn’t looking me in the eye anymore. I was just an object, merely an amusing toy he’d decided to play with.

That alone wouldn’t have been too bad, but the humiliating part was how my body was responding to his touch. It felt good. Being molested by a disgusting old geezer shouldn’t have felt good, but it did. My body juiced up. I bit my lip and stifled the urge to moan.

Mercifully, the groping stopped before I could embarrass myself further. There was a glimmer of holy light I recognized as Purify. The day’s sweat vanished from my body, as did the filth of the dungeon cell, and the contents of my bladder and bowels. Within a few seconds I was clean enough to eat off of. He gave my breast another parting squeeze, and let me go, patting me gently on my head and moving onto the ginger catgirl slave without a word.

He stuck a finger between her thighs and gently stroked her pussy. She whimpered at the violation, but didn’t dare say anything to him. He gathered a finger full of urine from her inner thigh, and licked it off his fingertip.

That was… a little bit eww…

Soon enough, I saw the flash of Purify and she was cleaned too. Next up was Chloe, who smiled submissively and allowed him to touch her breasts without a hint of shame or resistance. She even spread her thighs helpfully when he reached between her legs to poke a finger inside her.

None of these rapey assholes had introduced themselves, and I didn’t think they were going to. I decided to name this one Grandpa Bad Touch.

Grandpa Bad Touch continued down the hall, cleaning each slave one at a time, and enjoying their bodies with his hands. He even touched the men, firmly holding their delicate balls in his hand and gently massaging them as he cleaned their bodies with magic. He made sure not to leave until the boys were involuntarily hard, and thoroughly humiliated. Truly, Grandpa Bad Touch was a cosmopolitan pervert of many varied tastes.

Still, while he might have been a little creepy, his touch was always gentle, and he never hurt anyone. His biggest crime was inflicting humiliation and involuntary arousal on the captive slaves, I grudgingly had to respect that. That made him my favorite rapist of the bunch… the one least likely to crucify me and flay the skin off my legs.

Eventually, the white robed healer left us. The dark haired man, Satan’s Butler, returned and gave us all a final inspection.

“Please… I’ll be good… don’t torture me… I can suck… I’ll bend over…” the jittery catgirl whimpered.

“Urrrrgh!” She too, received a heavy punch to the gut for speaking out of turn. As awful as it was… part of me was a little bit glad I wasn’t the only one to make that mistake.

We silently hung around for another hour, mostly ignored by various tuxedo glad gentlemen as they wiped down the torture equipment and tools and did whatever other busywork the brothel had to do before they opened their doors. They also made a game of tugging the rope holding up the tortured elf’s cross and letting it drop, inflicting mind-shredding torment on the crucified dark elf, competing over who could get her to scream the loudest.

And then, the door to the dungeon opened and we got our first customers.